May 27, 2010

Quinn got Teamsters donations before McPier veto

Gov. Pat Quinn accepted $75,000 in campaign donation last month from the Teamsters union that would have benefited from changes he proposed when he vetoed legislation to overhaul the McCormick Place convention center.

The Quinn campaign confirmed the Teamsters gave two donations-—one for $25,000 and one for $50,000—-to the Quinn campaign on April 23. That was two weeks before the House and Senate passed legislation to re-organize the operations of the convention venue, following months of arduous negotiations.

But Quinn spokeswoman Mica Matsoff declared the timing of the contributions played no role in Quinn’s amendatory veto Wednesday, saying the “assertion is completely offensive.”

“Pat Quinn has spent 35 years as a reformer and fighting against political game playing,” Matsoff said.

Quinn included a change that would have helped the Teamsters broaden its jurisdiction at McPier, the authority that oversees McCormick Place and Navy Pier.

Both the House and Senate rejected Quinn’s changes, overriding him with bipartisan votes at the Capitol today. The recent donations were reported online today by Crain's Chicago Business.

Matsoff said the Teamsters were the first to endorse Quinn and that the union has given donations to him on a cycle of about every three months since Labor Day.

“This is not a secret,” Matsoff said. “Everyone knows the unions support the governor.”

Quinn has previously reported receiving more than $127,000 from various Teamsters locals since 1994, state records show, with $100,000 of the total coming since he embarked on his election campaign last September.

Quinn received two $50,000 checks from the Teamsters Volunteers in Politics, the political action committee of Teamsters Joint Council 25, which represents 22 union locals.

All 50 aldermen on the Chicago City Council had to file paperwork earlier this year detailing their outside income and gifts. The Tribune took that ethics paperwork and posted the information here for you to see. You can search by ward number or alderman's last name.

The Cook County Assessor's office has put together lists of projected median property tax bills for all suburban towns and city neighborhoods. We've posted them for you to get a look at who's paying more and who's paying less.

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Clout has a special meaning in Chicago, where it can be a noun, a verb or an adjective. This exercise of political influence in a uniquely Chicago style was chronicled in the Tribune cartoon "Clout Street" in the early 1980s. Clout Street, the blog, offers an inside look at the politics practiced from Chicago's City Hall to the Statehouse in Springfield, through the eyes of the Tribune's political and government reporters.